A Small Price to Pay: the Murder of Winsie Hau

[prologue]

Everyone has their price.

How much money would you need to be offered in order for you to consider committing a murder on someone else’s behalf? Or rather: What is the least amount of money you would accept as payment for committing a murder on someone else’s behalf?

A million dollars? A hundred grand? $10,000, perhaps? Would you do it for as little as a thousand bucks?

How about slightly less than $200 and the promise of a couple complimentary drinks at a local bar?

A young man named Jinhua found this last offer to be more than enticing enough. He eagerly accepted.

For this paltry fee, he was hired as a hitman by a teenage couple who had decided that a friend of theirs deserved to die for badmouthing them on Facebook.

知音难觅

A faithful friend is hard to find.

[one]

Joyce Hau – better known by her nickname, ‘Winsie’ – was a beautiful young lady with a lip piercing, an outgoing personality, and an insatiable thirst for salacious gossip. She was quite stylish and had a penchant for Louis Vuitton bags and Air Jordan sneakers.

Winsie was born in Hong Kong on May 15th, 1996, but she moved with her family to the Netherlands at such an early age that she came to speak the notoriously tricky Dutch language flawlessly, with no discernible accent. She was a clever girl, got good grades, played the piano, and was masterful at chess; she twice reached the semi-finals in nationwide tournament play as a member of the Damclub CTD, a prestigious chess club.

Winsie first met Polly K. at the Lorentz Lyceum in Arnhem, an international school where they both studied. The girls were each of Chinese descent and though they were perfectly able to get along with anyone, they often sought the company of their own kind, as was typical of the close-knit Chinese community of the Netherlands. It came as no surprise that the two girls found each other and bonded over their common ancestry. They quickly became fast friends, and for years they were inseparable.

By all accounts they were the best of friends from the moment they met up until the final few months of 2011, when Winsie was 15 and Polly was 16. What began as a petty argument quickly became a bitter rivalry. From there, it would rapidly evolve into something far more sinister.

At first, it appeared to be your typical teenage drama: a dispute between two catty young girls caught up in their relentless pursuit of popularity, jealous of all the attention the other was getting. But in the weeks that followed, the situation would spiral wildly out of control.

星星之火，可以燎原

A single spark can set an entire prairie ablaze.

[two]

Winsie's Facebook page.

Nobody could have guessed that a single, imprudent Facebook post by Winsie on a cold November night would set off an explosive chain of events that would ultimately cost her not only a friendship but much, much more.

In response to something slightly risqué that Polly had posted, Winsie wrote: “[Oh my god], how slutty can you get…”

It certainly didn't look like much. Just your typical teenage trash-talk.

But Polly was absolutely furious about it.

Although she was outraged by her best friend's careless remark, Polly did not reply directly to Winsie, instead enlisting the aid of some tough-talking friends while she seethed in silence. One young man said: “Winsie, you need to watch what you say and you better learn from your mistakes, otherwise you know what will happen.” Another suggested that “Winsie needs to shut up or else something serious is going to happen.” Friends of both Winsie and Polly dismissed these as empty threats. Some even chimed in to voice their amusement at what they assumed were merely adolescent theatrics.

Polly and Winsie stopped talking to each other. Everyone thought it was only a matter of days before they would make up and get back to being best friends again.

小洞不补，大洞吃苦

A small hole not mended soon becomes a large one that is impossible to mend.

[three]

Winsie and friends at The House of Billiards in Arnhem.

In early December, at the birthday party of a mutual friend at The House of Billiards, a pool hall in central Arnhem, Polly was surprised when Winsie showed up uninvited. According to several people who attended the party, Winsie’s arrival immediately caused an uncomfortable situation, and many openly questioned her decision to come. Polly chided Winsie for coming to a place she was not wanted, then confronted her about things Winsie had been saying on Facebook, specifically the message in which she had insinuated that Polly was promiscuous. Today, it remains unclear whether Winsie’s statement on Facebook was a serious sentiment or an off-the-cuff comment made in jest. What is clear is that – regardless of Winsie’s intent – Polly was extremely angry about it.

Voices were raised, a heated argument followed, and the two nearly came to blows. Polly shoved Winsie, Winsie shoved back, and in the ensuing scuffle Polly is said to have screamed “I’m going to kill you!” repeatedly before the two were separated by partygoers eager to defuse the situation. In the end, Polly told Winsie to “get out of [her] life” and stated that she never wanted to see her again. Winsie left The House of Billiards in tears, upset about the lack of support she had received from her other friends and convinced that Polly had turned them all against her.

防人之心不可無

Beware those who may harm you intentionally.

[four]

Winsie and Polly K.

After the incident at The House of Billiards, Polly began to send threatening messages to Winsie on a daily basis, and the two ruthlessly slandered one another on Facebook. Sometimes Polly took things just a little too far. She frequently implied that she was going to kill Winsie, that she could have the entire Hau family killed if she wanted to. Nobody took her statements too seriously, aside from Winsie.

In those hateful text messages Winsie received all too often, Polly was a lot less guarded with her words. It was always the same refrain, and stated in no uncertain terms: I'm going to kill you. 

As the conflict escalated, Winsie told friends that she was actually beginning to worry about her safety; these no longer sounded like idle threats. Polly seemed obsessed.

Her friends assured Winsie that she was mistaken, Polly would never actually do anything like that. She always said crazy things when she was angry, but she didn't really mean it. Polly was just a hothead.

Although their friendship had come to an abrupt and ugly end, many still believed it was possible that Polly and Winsie would eventually reconcile.

But Polly had no interest in making up with Winsie. She was beginning to feel an uncontrollable urge to exact revenge upon her former friend… physically. Terrorizing Winsie with menacing text messages was simply not enough. She wanted to inflict some actual, physical pain on Winsie.

Polly mulled over the matter with her boyfriend, Wesley C., a 17 year-old from Rotterdam. They had been a couple since October 8th of that year. According to acquaintances, Wesley was infatuated with Polly to the point of obsession, and she did not return his affection with anything nearing that same level of intensity. To her, having a boyfriend was more a matter of fashion than anything else.

There is no question that Polly had Wesley wrapped around her little finger. It was at her insistence that Wesley bleached his hair and got an ear piercing. He seemed willing to do anything she told him to.

Sometime during their discussions on how to deal with Winsie, the couple decided upon a drastic course of action.

They decided to silence Winsie, once and for all.

害人之心不可有

Do not desire to hurt others in the depths of your heart.

[five]

Polly K. and Wesley C.

Some say that Polly manipulated her doting boyfriend into going along with a murderous plot that he genuinely wanted no part of. Others insist that Wesley masterminded the entire plan and pressured his girlfriend into going along with it, after taking Polly’s threats against Winsie far more literally than she ever meant for them to be interpreted. Wesley fancied himself as something of a tough guy, often boasting that his family was connected to the Chinese mafia and his brother and cousins would assassinate someone at the drop of a hat if only he said the word, though none of this proved to be anything more big talk from a teenager eager to bolster his reputation.

Regardless of who devised the plan, records indicate that on December 9th, 2011, at the behest of his girlfriend, Wesley contacted an acquaintance who he believed would be willing to kill Winsie Hau for them.

For someone purportedly connected to the mafia, Wesley’s choice of hitman was certainly a strange one.

有錢能使鬼推磨

With money, you can make the devil turn your millstone.

[six]

Jinhua K.

Jinhua K. was the 14 year-old son of Chinese immigrants living in Capelle aan den Ijssel, a town on the eastern edge of Rotterdam. An insecure and impressionable young man, Jinhua was always eager to please his peers, often overly so. His mother said that he used to offer other kids his pocket money simply in exchange for hanging out with him. Friends and classmates say that as he grew older, Jinhua attempted to invent a new, tougher and manlier persona for himself, and frequently tried to impress others with exhibitions of machismo.

He knew Wesley through a group of Chinese boys in the Rotterdam area who often went clubbing together on the weekends. Jinhua was seen as somewhat of an outsider by the rest of the group, a sycophantic hanger-on whose presence was not so much enjoyed as it was tolerated. Jinhua desperately sought to gain the guys’ approval, and was determined to do so by any means necessary.

In an extraordinary display of warped logic, Jinhua convinced himself that if he accepted the mission from Wesley and killed Winsie, people would think he was cool.

It was initially reported that Jinhua had never known Winsie at all, that he had been hired to execute a perfect stranger. That would have made him a logical choice as a paid assassin; with no known connection to the victim, it would be extremely difficult for investigators to identify Jinhua as the culprit and ultimately trace the incident back to Polly and Wesley. But despite widespread reports to the contrary, Jinhua and Winsie had in fact crossed paths before. They were once photographed together at an Asian cultural festival in Arnhem, sitting side-by-side on a sofa, several weeks before Winsie and Polly’s friendship had even begun to fall apart. However, there is no evidence that Winsie and Jinhua were ever in close contact with one another, or could even be considered friends.

Clearly he did not care about her enough to rule out the possibility of killing her.

The negotiations began at around a thousand euros, not a lot for a contract killing but a seemingly improbable amount of money for two teenagers to round up at short notice. Polly introduced an idea to pay Jinhua in installments – €20 per month for the rest of his life – but this unrealistic plan was quickly scrapped.

The figure eventually fell all the way down to €150 and the promise of free drinks if Jinhua joined them for a night on the town at a later date, an absurdly small reward for something so risky.

Astonishingly, he accepted the offer.

冰冻三尺，非一日之寒

Three feet of ice does not result from one day of freezing weather.

[seven]

Winsie and an unidentified friend.

For more than a month, Polly plotted her revenge on Winsie, and Wesley relayed the details to Jinhua. They provided Jinhua with Winsie’s home address, a detailed description of the premises, an estimation of the hours that Winsie could be expected to be there, and the number of the bus route he could take from the train station directly to her house. Jinhua then waited patiently for word from Wesley on exactly when to put the plan into action.

While school was out for the winter break, Polly and Wesley began to get cold feet. Wesley called Jinhua one day and told him that they no longer wanted him to kill Winsie Hau. However, only a few days later they had another change of heart, so they phoned Jinhua and just like that, the plan was back on.

In the weeks that followed, Polly and Wesley continued to harass Winsie over the phone, on Facebook and Twitter, while Jinhua prepared himself for her killing. At least twice during this period, Jinhua traveled to the ‘t Broek neighborhood of Arnhem where Winsie lived in order to scout the location. Several residents of ‘t Broek would later claim that they saw Jinhua prowling around the area during the first two weeks of January.

One day, he finally received the go-ahead from Polly and Wesley.

君子报仇，十年未晚

One should wait for the right opportunity to exact vengeance.

[eight]

Winsie, Jinhua K. and an unidentified friend.

It was January 12th. Jinhua traveled from Capelle aan den Ijssel to the Hau family home in Arnhem with every intention of murdering Winsie when he got there. Surprisingly, she was not home. Nobody was. Jinhua waited outside on the street for some time before giving up and heading all the way back home, dejected.

When he reported back to Polly and Wesley, they were absolutely irate. According to Jinhua, they demanded that he return to the house in ‘t Broek in two days and not leave until he had killed Winsie, or else. Wesley told him that if Winsie was not dead by Saturday, Jinhua would be murdered by members of the Chinese mafia. It is unclear whether or not Jinhua actually believed these larger-than-life threats that Wesley so commonly made, but in any event he assured them that he would not fail again.

今日事，今日畢

Do not put off until tomorrow what can be done today.

[nine]

On Friday, January 13th, Jinhua went to a friend’s house in Venlo, sixty miles south of Arnhem, where he spent the night. From that location, he contacted Wesley via Skype. During this brief conversation, conducted in Cantonese, Wesley told him: “You have the address, you know where you need to go. She has piano lessons at 2 P.M., so you should be there at 3.” Jinhua asked what he should do if he encountered Winsie’s parents; “Should I get them too, if they’re home?” Wesley approved of the idea.

The following day, at 1:04 P.M. the friend that Jinhua had stayed with posted an ominous message on Facebook: “Today a girl will die at 3 P.M.”. Nobody took the message seriously enough to inform the police, though one girl wrote “Oh my God” in response.

At around the same time that this message was published, Jinhua was boarding a train from Venlo to Arnhem, where he arrived at approximately 2:30 P.M.. He then caught the #5 bus headed to the Presikhaaf district, getting off at a stop about ten minutes later, on the very street that Winsie lived. From there it was only a short walk to her house.

一分钱，一分货

You get what you pay for.

[ten]

Winsie's house.

Jinhua arrived at the bright blue door of 110 Stadhoudersstraat in the ‘t Broek neighborhood of Arnhem at three o’clock sharp. He knew he was at the right place because of the white paint that speckled the sidewalk out front and the stickers on the window – Snow White and Paddington Bear, among others – which Polly and Wesley had previously described to him.

He took a deep breath and rang the doorbell.

Jinhua was surprised when Winsie’s father Chun Nam Hau opened the door, but he remained calm and politely asked if he could speak to his daughter. Hau invited the young man in and summoned Winsie. Her father then headed into the kitchen, leaving the two teens alone together in the hallway.

Winsie closed the kitchen door to afford them some privacy. The moment the door was shut, Jinhua told her "I'm sorry I have to do this", then pulled out a knife and began to stab her repeatedly in the neck and face. So sudden and unexpected was the attack that the first few blows sank into Winsie unimpeded; she didn’t even have time to raise her hands in defense.

Hearing the commotion, Winsie’s father burst through the kitchen door and was immediately assaulted by Jinhua while his daughter staggered across the hall and collapsed on a set of stairs, bleeding profusely. Chun Nam Hau fought ferociously with him, attempting to wrestle the knife away from Jinhua and also prevent him from escaping. Winsie’s younger brother Winkit appeared in the doorway to the living room to see his father being stabbed in the arm, not far from his wrist, and then slashed savagely across the face. Winkit ran back into the living room to phone the police. Jinhua broke free from Hau’s grasp and fled from the scene.

生米煮成熟饭

The rice is already cooked; what is done cannot be undone.

[eleven]

Winsie's father, Chun Nam Hau.

Having heard what sounded like a violent struggle, a next-door neighbor came over to investigate and stumbled upon a gruesome scene. Chun Nam Hau was lying on the floor, disoriented and bleeding badly from a six-inch gash under his right eye, and Winsie was slumped over the stairs, “a lake of blood” forming beneath her. Chun Nam Hau begged his neighbor to ignore him and attend to his daughter, because he had not heard her say a word or make a sound since she had collapsed. It was immediately apparent to the neighbor that Winsie was in a critical condition.

Paramedics arrived within minutes and rushed Winsie and her father to the hospital, as police scoured the area for any sign of Jinhua. Shortly thereafter, reporters descended in droves upon the Stadhoudersstraat and the story quickly spread throughout the Netherlands.

Seeing a report of the stabbing of Winsie and Chun Nam Hau on television, someone else finally decided to comment on the eerie message Jinhua’s friend posted on Facebook earlier that day, the message that promised a girl was going to die. “Whoooooooooa… I just saw it on the news, man! Damn!!” Soon after, someone else offered a warning: “Be careful… the police also have Facebook…”

Two hours after the attack, police found Jinhua hiding in some bushes on the Johan de Wittlaan, a street not far from the scene of the crime, and coaxed him out at gunpoint after firing a warning shot.

At the hospital, Chun Nam Hau’s wounds proved not to be life-threatening, and he was stitched up and released shortly thereafter. However, it took a full two days before he was even allowed to visit his daughter in the intensive care unit. Due to his limited knowledge of the Dutch language, Chun Nam Hau was unsure of the extent of Winsie’s injuries until he finally got to see her with his own eyes.

The situation was bad. Really bad. Winsie hadn’t regained consciousness since she'd collapsed during the attack.

Doctors were doing everything they could think of, but Winsie was struggling to survive.

Five days later, on January 19th, 2012, Winsie succumbed to her injuries and died.

木已成舟

The timber has already been made into a boat.

[twelve]

Police process the crime scene.

In police custody, Jinhua held out for as long as he could. He was tight-lipped and spoke very little, mumbling his way through countless hours of interrogation over the course of the next couple days. Because he was a minor, his parents and an attorney were present at all times.

Jinhua must have felt the noose tightening. He had been caught red-handed – quite literally so – and numerous eyewitnesses saw him either at the scene of the crime or fleeing from it.

The police were intentionally vague in describing the extent of Winsie’s injuries to her assailant. Jinhua had no idea whether or not she would survive, though after two days with no word of her death he probably assumed that she would.

Jinhua weighed his options. If the stabbings turned out to be non-fatal, the infamously lax Dutch legal system would probably let him off with little more than a slap on the wrist. But if Winsie ended up dying, Jinhua would be in serious trouble. Unless…

On Tuesday, January 17th, while Winsie was still alive, Jinhua rolled over on one of his co-conspirators and – though he offered very few details – told investigators that it had all been Wesley’s idea.

樹倒猢猻散

When a tree falls, the monkeys scatter.

[thirteen]

A makeshift memorial for Winsie.

That very same day, police found Wesley C. at his home in Rotterdam and brought him in for questioning. Facing the interrogators, Wesley was defiant and uncooperative. He was determined not to rat on his girlfriend Polly, and claimed that he didn’t even know Jinhua, that Jinhua had no idea what the hell he was talking about. There was nothing that linked him to the crime, he insisted.

But on Thursday the 19th, when word of Winsie’s death got out and a stunned nation began to raise its voice and demand answers, Wesley realized how serious the situation had become. The murder was receiving far more attention than he or Polly had ever imagined. In the days following Winsie’s death, hundreds of people came to her house to leave flowers and candles, and on January 25th crowds gathered in the center of Arnhem to observe a moment of silence in Winsie’s honor.

Wesley still held out hope that he would be able to weasel his way out of this sticky situation and – loyal to a fault – he vowed never to mention Polly’s role in the whole ordeal.

But then investigators discovered the threatening text messages, the damning discussions on Facebook and Skype, all those digital documents that spelled out in excruciating detail each and every person’s role in the diabolical plot to murder Winsie Hau.

The jig was up.

纸包不着火

A fire cannot be wrapped in paper.

[fourteen]

A crowd gathers in Arnhem to observe a moment of silence for Winsie.

On Tuesday, January 24th, police arrived at her family’s home in Arnhem and arrested Polly K. on suspicion of conspiring to murder Winsie Hau.

Just a few nights before, a group of Winsie’s friends had gathered in a field to light a Kongming lantern in her honor, as a sort of farewell ceremony. As the lantern was lit and released into the sky, a girl named Chi Ting pulled out her cell phone to film the proceedings. In the recording, a female voice can be heard shouting “Good bye, Winsie!” in an almost cheerful manner, as the lantern slowly floats away. It was Polly.

When Chun Nam Hau first heard that the police had arrested Polly for her involvement in his daughter’s death, he could not believe it. There must be some sort of mistake, he insisted. Winsie and Polly had been best friends!

It was a statement that stunned the investigators. All the evidence they had uncovered so far indicated that the two girls were mortal enemies. Digging through phone records and social media sites, detectives had begun to compile a detailed log of hostility between the two that reached back at least a month and a half. Had the two girls really been best friends prior to this vicious war of attrition?

Chun Nam Hau explained that Polly and his daughter had recently had a falling out and been at loggerheads ever since. He had chalked this up to typical teenage drama and assumed it would pass. With his daughter now dead, he realized he had been horribly mistaken.

Polly knew she was in it up to her neck. Jinhua had been in police custody for ten days already. Her boyfriend had been held for a week at this point. What were the odds that both boys had kept their mouths shut? Pretty slim, Polly thought.

While she did not deny that she had played a role in Winsie’s murder, Polly was determined to do some damage control with her confession. She concocted a story that she hoped would get her off the hook.

兵不厌诈

Nothing is too deceitful in war.

[fifteen]

Polly K. and Winsie.

Polly admitted to having threatened Winsie on multiple occasions but insisted that none of what she said had been anything more than empty threats. It was her boyfriend who first began to take things too far. Wesley was the one who suggested they actually do something to Winsie. But even at this point, any plan to murder Winsie was purely hypothetical, Polly said, just teenage daydreams. It was only after they mentioned the idea to Jinhua that things truly began to get out of hand.

Polly suggested that Jinhua had been all too eager to assassinate Winsie, that he really took the ball and ran with it. When she and Wesley became concerned that he was really going to go through with the killing, they tried to pull the plug on the operation but Jinhua continued full steam ahead, against their wishes.

Wesley told investigators a slightly different story. The plan to kill Winsie had originated with Polly, who was absolutely consumed with anger at her former friend for what she perceived to be an unforgiveable betrayal. It was at her insistence that he contacted Jinhua, but he had only served as a middleman between the two and had no part in the planning or execution of the attack.

He offered some echoes of his girlfriend’s statement to police: Jinhua was a madman, they never believed he would actually go through with it, and he unilaterally decided to commit the murder on his own after Polly had experienced a change of heart. Wesley painted himself as a completely innocent man, someone who had only been along for the ride, and he tried his best to make his girlfriend sound like an unwilling participant in the crime as well, though he tacitly admitting that the hatred Polly felt for Winsie had indeed been the impetus for her murder.

Although all three conspirators offered conflicting accounts of what had happened in the lead-up to that dreadful afternoon of January 14th, they had all in one way or another confessed to their involvement in the plot to kill Winsie Hau.

It was time for them to face the music.

善有善报，恶有恶报

Kind deeds pay rich dividends; evil is repaid with evil.

[sixteen]

S.W. Hoek-Nieuwenburg, Jinhua K.'s attorney.

Jinhua was the first to have his day in court, which convened in the Rechtbank in Arnhem on August 20th, 2012. He was formally charged with the premeditated murder of Winsie Hau and the attempted manslaughter of Chun Nam Hau.

Jinhua had only recently turned 15. Due to his age he would not be tried as an adult, which dramatically reduced the number of years that he could potentially be imprisoned if the court found him guilty of the crimes he was accused of.

Jinhua was defended by S.W. Hoek-Nieuwenburg of Hoek-Niewenburg Law & Mediation, a one-woman firm based in the town of Made in North Brabant. The state prosecutor was Josan Schram. Presiding over the trial were Judges Wendy J. Vierveijzer, J.T. van Belzen, and M.E. Snijders, who made the unorthodox decision to make Jinhua’s trial open to the public, a rarity for juvenile cases in the Netherlands.

The Hau family was also present in the courtroom. Winsie's mother wore a white t-shirt emblazoned with an image of her daughter.

Though she didn’t go so far as to assert that her client was completely innocent, S.W. Hoek-Nieuwenburg pressed for acquittal on both counts.

She insisted that Jinhua had been coerced into murdering Winsie Hau by Wesley and Polly, who had threatened to have him and his family killed if he did not complete the mission, a threat Jinhua had believed in earnest.

Hoek-Nieuwenburg painted a portrait of Jinhua as a developmentally disabled and psychologically troubled young man with an uncommonly deep desire to gain others’ approval and feel a sense of belonging. She suggested that her client had never fully considered the consequences of his actions prior to the 14th of January, and was in fact mentally incompetent to do so.

Jinhua was in no way involved in the planning of the crime, Hoek-Nieuwenburg said, and any and all premeditation could only be ascribed to Polly and Wesley. They had exerted an overwhelming amount of pressure on her impressionable young client and manipulated him into doing their bidding.

For good measure, Hoek-Nieuwenburg kicked around the idea that Jinhua had experienced some sort of stress-induced blackout during the time of the attack and may not have been entirely in control of his actions.

Prosecutor Josan Schram countered that Jinhua had known exactly what he was doing all along. For more than a month, he had schemed with Polly and Wesley to murder Winsie, and he’d had every opportunity to back out or alert the authorities, but chose not to.

There was little evidence to suggest that Jinhua had any major mental problems, Josan Schram said. Indeed, he appeared to be a perfectly normal teenage boy with above-average intelligence and only a slight awkwardness to him; he was certainly not a lunatic.

Schram insisted that – contrary to what Hoek-Nieuwenburg said – Jinhua had been an active participant in the development of the murder plot. Transcripts of online conversations showed Jinhua asking questions and discussing various scenarios with Wesley and Polly about how the murder might play out, which was indicative of his direct role in the planning.

To emphasize Jinhua’s intent to kill both Winsie and her father, Schram pointed to the fact that he had immediately gone for Winsie’s throat, knowing full well of the presence of major arteries there, as well as her temples. When assaulting Chun Nam Hau, Jinhua had first tried to slice his wrist, missing by mere inches.

On September 3rd, 2012, Judges Vierveijzer, van Belzen, and Snijders delivered their verdict.

For the other two defendants, it must have felt like an ominous portent of things to come.

The court found Jinhua guilty on both counts.

当局者迷,旁观者清

The spectators see more of the game than the players.

[seventeen]

Bram Moszkowicz, Polly K.'s attorney.

Since there is no provision in Dutch law that allows for a person to be tried as an accessory to murder, Polly was instead charged with two counts of conspiracy to commit a homicide. Unlike Jinhua, her trial was held behind closed doors. She was represented by the flamboyant, high-powered defense attorney Abraham Maarten Moszkowicz.

Bram Moszkowicz was considered to be the Johnny Cochran of the Netherlands, a lawyer to the stars. It is unclear how Polly’s family was able to afford his services. Moszkowicz had previously represented such high-profile clients as Willem Holleeder, the organized crime kingpin convicted of kidnapping the heir to the Heineken fortune, and Geert Wilders, a controversial politician who was charged with inciting hatred, for which he was acquitted.

Interestingly, Moszkowicz was disbarred on October 30th, 2012 while Polly’s trial was still in progress, due to allegations of tax evasion to the tune of more than a million euros. However, he was allowed to continue practicing law while he appealed the ruling.

In court, Polly reiterated her claim that she never truly intended on having Winsie killed. It was Wesley and Jinhua who took it upon themselves to murder her because they mistakenly believed it would please Polly.

Polly’s mother testified to the unsavory character of her daughter’s boyfriend. She said she had been suspicious of Wesley from the very moment he and Polly began dating, and she was sure he had connections to the Chinese mafia.

While she was on the stand, Polly’s mother also let slip a rather startling revelation.

She had been aware of the threatening text messages her daughter had been sending to Winsie all along, and had done nothing.

灯不拨不亮，理不辩不明

An oil lamp becomes brighter when the wick is trimmed.

[eighteen]

The Rechtbank in Arnhem, where all three trials were held.

Wesley was also tried behind closed doors. He reportedly looked very nervous and spent much of his time gazing at the ground. When he spoke, his voice cracked and quavered. This was not the boastful and boisterous young man that his friends knew. Wesley’s conscience was clearly weighing on him.

Like his girlfriend, Wesley was charged with two counts of conspiracy to commit a homicide.

At the urging of his attorney, Wesley brought to the courtroom a brand new defensive strategy that was seemingly at odds with much of what he had said previously. This time around, he heaped as much of the blame onto Polly as he could. In her trial, she and her mother had thrown him under the bus. He no longer felt any obligation to protect her. It was time for some payback.

It had all been Polly’s idea from the very beginning, Wesley told the judges. When she first informed him of her plan to have Winsie killed, Wesley says he responded by asking her “Have you gone crazy?”

Polly pressured him into helping arrange for Winsie’s murder, Wesley said, by threatening to commit suicide if he refused. Once, she consumed almost two dozen diet pills to prove to him just how serious she was. He also said that approximately one week prior to the murder, he had tried to break up with Polly but she grabbed a razor and indicated that she intended on slashing her wrists. Wesley said that at this point he decided to stay together with Polly to prevent her from harming herself.

Wesley did a total U-turn on something else he had said previously. Before, he claimed he was merely the middleman between Polly and Jinhua, but now he insisted his role was not even so prominent as that. Wesley admitted that it was true he had introduced Jinhua to Polly as someone who might help her get revenge on Winsie, but after that they only communicated directly with one another and the entire plan was formulated solely between those two. He was little more than a casual observer, Wesley insisted.

Wesley said he did everything he could think of to postpone the murder, or even prevent it from happening at all. Everything except call the cops, that is.

In the weeks prior to the crime, Wesley furnished Jinhua with some fireworks, specifically a package of Cobra-6s, which could make fairly powerful explosions. He allegedly told Jinhua: “Better fireworks than a knife.” The idea was for Jinhua to drop them through the mail slot on the front door of the Hau house in ‘t Broek. Wesley said he had hoped that this would be a sufficient act of revenge against Winsie to satisfy Polly and cause her to call off the killing. But before Jinhua could put the fireworks to use, his parents discovered them in his room and they were confiscated.

As Wesley’s trial wound down, it was unclear whether or not the judges were buying his revised story. Some of it seemed plausible, but for the most part it appeared to be a last-ditch effort by Wesley to save his skin.

At the end of the trial the judges announced that they would be taking a two-week recess, after which they would deliver their verdicts on both Polly and Wesley simultaneously.

儿行千里母担忧

When children travel far from home, their mothers never stops worrying.

[nineteen]

Winsie, when she was younger.

Before the conclusion of Wesley's trial, Winsie’s mother asked if she could address the court. The judges permitted it.

She stood before the court wearing a white T-shirt with Winsie’s smiling face printed upon it, the same shirt she wore every single day that she came to the Rechtbank in Arnhem to attend any of the three trials.

She cleared her throat and began to speak, softly and in Cantonese. An interpreter translated for her.

First she turned to Wesley’s parents and asked them a series of questions. How was it possible that their son had done such a thing? How had Wesley ended up this way? How had they raised him? They remained silent, but their lips were trembling and their eyes watering.

“Your children are your most precious possession,” Winsie's mother explained as she turned to face the rest of the courtroom. “I will forever blame myself for leaving the house so early that day. Because of that, I will never again hear my daughter say 'Mom, I love you.'

"I can’t bear the thought that my little girl has left this world, covered in stab wounds."

She paused, took several deep breaths, and closed her eyes. Then she addressed her daughter's ghost directly.

"Winsie, Mommy misses you every day. Mommy misses you so, so much, every single day.”

The interpreter began to sob and needed to take a moment to compose herself before continuing. Soon, there was not a dry eye left in the courtroom.

“I am in the deepest depths of despair. I constantly ask myself: Why? Why?"

Unexpectedly, Wesley interrupted her, his voice shaking and his eyes filling with tears.

“I’m right there with you,” he said, then broke down and wept.

肉包子打狗

Punishment gives less incentive than a reward.

[twenty]

A courtroom sketch of Jinhua K. at his sentencing hearing.

Just like Jinhua, Polly and Wesley were found guilty.

At first, it appeared to be a triumph of the Dutch legal system. All three participants in the murder of Winsie Hau had been determined to be criminally culpable for her death. Surely they would each receive harsh punishment for their evil deeds, and they would deserve every last bit of it.

But when Polly, Wesley, and Jinhua finally received their sentences, it ignited a firestorm of controversy.

For intricately planning Winsie’s demise and hiring the hitman who would carry out the diabolical plot, the prosecution sought a sentence of five years in prison, the maximum punishment for the crime under Dutch law. Shockingly, Polly K. and Wesley C. were each sentenced to just two years in a juvenile detention center. Upon release, they will be required to attend up to seven years of mandatory therapy.

For stabbing Winsie to death in her own home and slicing her father’s face open, Jinhua K. was sentenced to one year in juvenile detention, one year of probation, and three years of therapy.

家家有一本难念的经

Each family has its own kind of hell.

[epilogue]

Jinhua never got his €150. Police did find a bottle of whiskey in his room; it was given to him by Polly and Wesley. At least they made good on that part of the bargain. After the murder, Jinhua had planned to head home to Capelle aan den Ijssel for a celebratory drink, to congratulate himself on a job well done, but he never made it that far. He hasn’t been home since police found him cowering in the bushes on the Johan de Wittlaan. The bottle remains unopened. He’s still too young to drink it, anyway.

Polly and Wesley’s lopsided relationship was nowhere near strong enough to weather the storm. After turning on each other in court, they broke up and have not spoken since.

It’s hard to say what made them all think they could get away with it. Polly and Wesley had been publicly feuding with Winsie for more than a month before she died; of course they would be suspected of involvement when she was murdered. And Jinhua killed her in a busy neighborhood in broad daylight; he should have had no reasonable expectation of escaping.

But in light of the punishment Polly, Wesley, and Jinhua received – or rather, the lack thereof – perhaps they did get away with it after all.

Between the three of them, they would spend a grand total of five years behind bars for murdering Winsie Hau in cold blood.

As penance for the senseless slaying of an innocent young girl, it was certainly a small price to pay.

THE END